think i broke the wings
by thedorkygirl
Summary: This was the rest of Lilly's life. Circa Lilly Kane's murder. Solution. Spoiler for the finale warning now applied, because I guessed right.


**title**: think i broke the wings  
**author**: keren ziv  
**spoilers**: up to but not including season one finale  
**rating**: M  
**summary**: _This was the rest of Lilly's life_. Circa Lilly Kane's murder.

..asterisk..

You think you know, but you don't. You really don't.

(this is it)

She found her son screaming over Lilly's body. At first, she hadn't been able to see what he was eulogizing, though she hadn't known at the time that he was crying an epitaph. She had just heard the sounds crawling through the house and over her skin. It'd irritated her; his lament became an itch that she could not reach.

"Duncan," she called pleasantly through the open doors, "shut up."

She held the mail as she walked poolside to where she could see her son. It was late in the evening, and the sun was making a weak effort on the water to reflect more brightly. It was failing in its task.

She would never be certain when it was that she had finally understood what Duncan was wailing. Sometimes it would be by the edge of the pool; other times when she saw the blood. Most times, though, she would say that it was when she saw Lilly's foot at that odd angle. Blood could be explained -- for it might not have been blood, perhaps it had only occurred to her that it was blood in the memories but not the actual moment -- but Lilly's foot was catawampus. At least, this was where she dropped the mail. This was where she liked to think that she knew.

"Lilly!" she screamed, running forward. Duncan's form covered her daughter like a blanket warming a body, and she couldn't see much more than long legs and knocked knees for several moments. She couldn't rush forward; she couldn't stretch out a hand and pull her son away. For the most ceaseless moments, she held still, her daughter's name caught her in throat as a recording in a loop.

By accident, Duncan's dirge mixed with her own then, and she chanted with him her daughter's name until she was holding him. Had he stood? Had she reached for him? She would not be able to tell her husband whether Duncan had come to her or if she had ultimately drew him off, only that she had found herself with her arms around Duncan, whispering Lilly's name. When they both quieted, she felt that she could match the beat of her heart to his.

"Duncan," she said into his hair. "Duncan, what have you done?"

"I don't know." Duncan was hoarse, his voice catching at her and tearing away tiny pieces of her sanity. "Mom, I don't know."

She held her breath.

At that moment, she would learn afterward, her husband had been saying good-bye to Lianne Mars. Later she would hiss into his shoulder as he made her come that, while he had been bidding his whore adieu, she had been shaping the outline of her family's future.

She exhaled.

"Change your clothes."

"What?"

"Change your clothes. Wash them." She bent down and collected the fallen mail. "I'm going to call your father."

Duncan looked so young to her, standing in his soccer uniform and with disheveled hair. She remembered when he'd been born, and how tiny he had been. She remembered still how tiny he'd been when Lilly had come home from the hospital, all pink and noisy, two characteristics that would follow her throughout the rest of her life.

This was the rest of Lilly's life. It was at rest and over. What happened then was Duncan's life, and Celeste's life, and Jake's life, and she would be damned if it would collapse on the three of them.

"Mommy, I'm sorry."

She pretended that she hadn't heard him. She had to.

"Your father will know what to do. Hurry."

(but perhaps)

"How much do you love me?" Lilly asked, holding a handkerchief in her hand. She twirled it around her index finger and smiled.

Logan laughed from across the room, head deep in his liquor cabinet. He didn't know the game yet, but Lilly knew that he was willing to play almost anything that she was. And if he wasn't ... well. Lilly had options, though she wouldn't tell Logan that.

"Depends on what you're wearing."

"Good answer and yet so wrong."

He came back with a bottle of something deliciously old and expensive (probably, she reflected, taken from his father's personal stash) and set it precariously on the edge of the table. She caught his eye, lifted the handkerchief to her lips, and pounced.

"Hey!" he laughed between kisses. "This is how we're playing?"

Lilly had taught Logan how to behave; he was tied to the bed in a matter of minutes, his shirt cast aside as part of her own forethought. Lilly's dress ended up on the floor and her shoes across the room, miraculously managing to miss everything as they shot like missiles to their destination.

She was almost there: _one more minute, _she whispered when his phone went off. They only needed one more minute. Her back arched as he slid his hands down her sides.

"My dad," Logan said. "I gotta get this."

She threw herself back and crossed her arms across her stomach, watching her nipples instead of Logan. More interesting, and they didn't leave her for their father.

She was aware of the fact that he had shimmed off the handkerchiefs that she'd used to secure him to the bedpost.

"Not very good handcuffs."

"That's 'cause you tie knots like a girl," he said. He reached for her without turning around. She inched away, sitting up and sighing. He echoed her exhalation. "I'm sorry, Lilly. I'll come back as soon as possible."

Their night together was a bust. Lilly already had her panties on and was reaching for her bra.

"No matter. Crash in your own room tonight. I'm going to clean up, and then I'm heading home and practically marrying my bed, I'm so tired."

She lay back down, contemplating her options.

"You sure?" he asked.

Yeah, she was sure.

"Go! Go, go, go, go, go!"

She listened to him as he left, burrowing under the blankets and slamming the pillow over her head. _Count to twenty_, she told herself. _Count to twenty, then go home and call him_.

And it goes like this: she was asleep, covered mostly with bedclothes and partially by the morning twilight that masked shadows as ghosts and gave silhouettes muscle, when she awoke to the opening of a cabinet. Not fully wakeful, she lifted her head slightly and peered out from under the cover. That was when she saw him.

She didn't gasp; neither did she draw in a sharp intake of breath. Instead, her breath caught in her throat as she watched, fascinated, while television screens blinked into focus. His back was to her and blocking most of the screens, but she could see the bed, plain as day, from her perch. Almost in disbelief, she lifted an arm and watched as a blanket onscreen stirred.

When she was dead, she wondered why he hadn't seen her there as she moved. Perhaps it was fate; more likely it was chance. Either way, she was dead, so there was no regret in her thoughts, only morbid curiosity. What things would have changed the outcome?

Should she have stood and walked out of the pool house, startling him and bringing him to -- to what? Sudden action? A sooner, more obvious murder? Or should she have lain still, as she did, then bound, as she did, home to tell her parents, as she did not. Would the shame with which she had threatened him have been the safest life insurance?

Only wonderings, of course, because she had waited until he'd collected his precious tapes -- tapes! Lilly Kane was a porn star, imagine -- and slipped out of the pool house as silently as she could. She had driven herself there and wasn't forced to walk home (thank _God_, because her shoes, she realized belatedly, were strewn somewhere in that pool house, and she'd just had a pedicure).

"What a secret," she whispered to herself in the protection of her own room. "What a big damn secret."

She took out a pen and wrote a note.

W, I need you to help me get some videos.

(well, shit happens)

He received a message early in the morning to meet her that very day. He didn't know, of course, what it was about. How could he have? It had been running so smoothly for so long that he almost had forgotten that there was anything to hide.

Three hours before the designated time, he threw down the book he was reading and made ready to leave for the Kane residence. He took a cab to the corner of her street, because he enjoyed the walk up her lane and because it was a cul-de-sac in which it was difficult to navigate without entering a residence's drive. He rang the bell.

She met him at the front door in a bathing suit and a towel. It affected him, making his breath catch slightly, and he could tell that she noticed when he shifted his gaze and looked the other way. She caught his eye with something like smirk, something like a scowl.

"Oh," she said, dismissive. "It's you."

"You weren't expecting me?"

"I was working on my tan. You're early."

"Had the time," he answered, which was the truth in any case.

He followed her out back, thinking about the way hands could slide down hips and grasp and steer and how whispers could get lost in navels and --

"You're blocking my sun."

"Look, I didn't come here to watch you sunbathe."

"But I'm so much better television than Baywatch, don't you think?"

His eyes narrowed. This right there would be where he'd say that he tensed. He wasn't certain of anything at that moment: of what she knew, of what she didn't know, and at what point he'd call her bluff.

"You sent for me, said it was important. What do you need?"

"Lots of pretty things," Lilly said, stretching her legs out in front of her and sighing into the sun's face. "Things that I think only _you_ can provide. After all, you have an eye for the special. You chose me."

He chose his words carefully, speaking over the slam-slam-slam of his heart.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

She laughed, and he heard the laugh say these words: _of course you know what I'm talking about -- I don't fuck around_.

"You're a pervert. And it's going to cost for your little deviance. Let's face it," and Lilly turned then and angled her body so that she was facing him. "I'm an expensive girl to buy off."

On her wrists there would be bruising that would show up hours and days after she died. He'd grabbed her, grabbed her and held her hands together while he _thought_. If she were afraid, she hadn't shown it. Maybe she hadn't thought that she truly was in any trouble. Maybe she thought that she'd tied these handkerchiefs as loosely as the first pair. She hadn't.

"Get off of me,"she snarled, snatching her hands away.

"Damnit." He ran his hands through his hair in frustration, a family trait. "Damnit, don't you _ever_ shut up? Just once?"

"What's the matter? Afraid that my big mouth will get you in trouble? Boo hoo hoo, there go producers and directors, because who wants to deal with that scandal in the family? There goes money and fancy cars and pretty little girlfriends and _cameras in the pool house_."

Unlike Celeste Kane, he would know exactly when his thoughts had changed from ignorance to knowledge. When Lilly Kane had told him everything that he needed to know -- namely that she knew all -- he had _known_ that the only way to keep her quiet would be the permanent solution, the only solution available to him.

Or maybe not, because decisions are made in memory more often than during the actual moments of action. Later on, all that he could honestly say is that he picked up the first heavy thing he saw and swung, like a baseball player, like a golfer, like a harvester. His yield gave him hair more yellow and white than wheat in the hot afternoon sun and blood more red than the earth could offer.

If he had forgotten how to breathe in the previous few minute, he certainly remembered now. It came out jagged and distinct in one breath from another. With each inhalation, he gave power to the heart thundering in his ears. To him it sounded like a siren, and he thought of Poe's passages on the last beats of a heart. Only then, he reminded himself, it had been guilt. This -- this was to protect his family.

Without realizing it, he made it out of the backyard. Sitting in the trees lining the south edge of the property, hidden mostly from view, he tried to catch his breath and sanity congruently. He sat very still for several counts, thinking. He was started out of his reverie by a strange, irregular thudding behind the closed gate. Somebody was throwing rocks up at one of the second story windows.

"Lilly!" a distinctly male voice hissed. He listened, head cocked, half in a crouch and ready to spring away. "Lilly, you genius, you have the security system off for me, now what did you want? Lilly!"

It was some Latino kid by the accent, and he thought to himself_, find the body; find the body and call the sheriff's and try to save her and get your fingerprints on her and her blood on you and make it easy on the Kane family. _Really, he didn't want them to suffer any more than they had to. It wasn't their fault that their daughter had threatened to destroy _his_ familyDarwin and all.

As he sat there and thought of the reasons why he'd had to do it, the kid grew tired of calling out Lilly's name and getting no answer.

"Bitch," he muttered just loud enough someone -- perhaps sitting in an open bedroom window and laughing, perhaps lying quiet by the pool -- to hear before noisily stomping away.

_Walk away_, he told himself. _Stroll down the street and then call a cab. Go somewhere visible._

He was almost the long ways down the lane to the corner that would take him out of sight of the Kane home when he heard a vehicle pull up. He glanced over his shoulder in a quick, jerky motion. Behind him, he saw Duncan drive to his gate and dial the security code, oblivious to his presence. For a moment, he tensed, thinking, _she disabled it earlier for that spic, _and waiting for Duncan to glance up the street and notice him. It didn't happen. Duncan went into his drive and the gate shut behind him.

Thoughts went around in his mind: how long he had been there, how long it would take to get to a public place far, far away from the Kane residence, how long it would take to discover the body. If he were lucky, it would be discovered just late enough for him to go somewhere and make an appearance.

He couldn't know, of course, that his actions would be covered up by the parents of his very victim. There were many things that Aaron Echolls was and many more that he had played, but a psychic was not among them.

(isn't there anybody i can trust in this world?)

And that's how. That's how it happened, and that's what you wanted to know, isn't it?

..asterisk..

finis


End file.
